Betrayal of the objective and the ideological meltdown in Pakistan

Dr. Firoz Mahboob Kamal

The betrayal

After the conquest of Delhi in the late 12^th century by Sultan Muhammad Ghouri, the creation of Pakistan is the most important single event in the Muslim history of South Asia. Pakistan came into being not only as a state but as an embodiment of a concept, a faith, a philosophy, and a dream. The inspiration for such a great achievement came from no other source or individual but from the Holy Qur’an –the fundamental source of all inspirations of Muslims. It was a great philosopher and poet like Allama Muhammad Iqbal who could envision for a state for the Indian Muslims. It was another great statesman cum leader like Qaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah who could successfully lead to another great victory for the South Asian Muslims. After a long colonial occupation, the degenerated and demoralized Muslim ummah could find a ray of new hope in the creation of this new country. It went like thrills of astounding victory all over the Islamic world.

The creation of Pakistan was indeed a remarkable achievement of the Indian Muslims. While the Muslims of other parts of the world were awfully disintegrated and Islam’s Arab heartland got fragmented into 22 pieces, the Indian Muslims showed an astonishing spirit of pan-Islamic brotherhood and unity. It wasn’t any tribal, racial, geographical or linguistic affinity or any secular ideology that helped create this largest Muslim country in the contemporary world. It was only Islam that could galvanize the Muslim population of the whole of South Asia to overcome the differences entrenched in languages, dress codes, food habits, lifestyles, and many geo-climatological specifics. Because of the unity, they could establish an Islamic state despite the joint opposition of the British colonialists and the Hindu majority.

It is a pivotal article of Muslims’ faith that all successes come only from Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’ala.–(Surah Anfal verse 10). No one can earn it on his or her own. It is also a declared principle of All-Powerful Allah that He bestows blessings on Muslims for practicing unity and brotherhood. And He sends severe punishment for division and feuds. – (Surah Imran, verse 105). The Muslims of South Asia could qualify for the blessings by forging pan-Islamic brotherhood and unity. So, they could succeed in creating Pakistan despite all opposition. And it was created on the blessed night of 27 Ramadan.

But the immense opportunity that came with the creation of Pakistan also started quickly disappearing. The country was taken over by a clique of people who showed the ugliest betrayal against the cause of its creation. They betrayed the vision and agenda of Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’ala. The betrayal was also against the basics of Islam like Qur’anic literacy, sharia, shura and the pan-Islamic brotherhood. Instead of Pan-Islamism, localism based on land, language and ethnicity got a new hype. The ideology that helped create Pakistan is no more welcome in its political, intellectual and academic circles. Thus the country moved towards making another history. It is the history of disunity and hatred based on ethnic, linguistic, and regional affinity. The pre-1947 pan-Islamic brotherhood was almost dead and the issue of Islamisation of the state no longer remained a priority. Instead, secularisation of politics, education, state and culture became the new agenda. The people got more interested in material gains and more focussed on provincial matters, local traditions, feudal politics, and personal interests. They want more foreign money and investment only to enhance their material affluence and wellbeing. Since implementation of sharia or Islamisation of state and education is unacceptable to the Western powers, these became a taboo in politics. To impress the country’s foreign stakeholders, de-Islamisation and secularisation were given the highest priority. Thus the binding glue of pan-Islamism started to erode from politics and from people’s lives. So the country got politically divided along the provincial borders. And the country fell apart in 1971.

So the opportunity of an Islamic renaissance which was in high hype in 1947 got a deep recession. Instead of following the Qur’anic road map, the country’s political leaders and the army generals are more eager to be the partners of the US-led coalition’s war on Islam. The reason is quite clear; it generates foreign money and ensures a pompous life overseas. Therefore, during the President General Musharraf’s era, the US drones were allowed to access the Pakistani air space to kill the innocent Muslims in neighbouring Afghanistan and also inside its own territory. The US drones launched more than 400 drone attacks on Pakistani soil and killed 1300 people. Of them, 90 percent are innocent. (Source: Al-Jazeera English Television, 24/10/2015). It is claimed that about 70 thousand Pakistanis had to die in the US’s war on Islam. The US Cobra helicopter could violate the border and kill anybody they wish –as they did in Abbottabad. The Pakistan Army –boastful of their nuclear arsenal could stand only as bystanders. If the US government has an iota of trust in the Pakistan government and the Army, would have asked the Pakistan Army to conduct the operation in Abbottabad instead of violating Pakistan’s sovereign air space. Pakistan is relevant to the US only to use the geopolitically strategic country as a stooge to execute its agenda. Thus Pakistan reinforces the old dictum that if a country sacrifices its ideological identity, also loses its sense of self-esteem. Pakistan now survives as a state without an ideology.  

The evils of the colonial occupation

The long rule of the colonialists in South Asia helped generate a huge army of ideological and cultural converts. The project of religious conversion of the European invaders failed badly, but the ideological and cultural conversion worked tremendously. These converts proved no less inimical against Islam than the religious converts. They worked as mercenaries to prolong colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent. More than two hundred thousand Indian Muslims even fought wars in Iraq, Syria, and Palestine to bring those Muslim lands under the British occupation. The colonialists have withdrawn their own army but not the army of these ideological and cultural converts. As a result, although the colonial occupation formally ended in Pakistan in 1947, their ideological and cultural occupation continues. The country’s cantonments, the judiciary, and the bureaucracy still remain the occupied territory of these cultural and ideological converts. Islam with its fundamental concepts like sharia, hudud, jihad, shura, khilafah had little access to these occupied territories. The drinking of wine in officers’ mess in cantonments in Pakistan was only stopped by General Zia ul Haq in the late seventies. The kuffar law of the British still rules the Pakistani judiciary; hence illicit sex (jinna) is not punishable if done with the consent.

Such an occupation of Pakistan by the ideological and cultural converts –the home-grown invaders restricts the practice of full Islam, thereby prohibits the local citizens from becoming complete Muslims. Whereas to please Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’ala, a Muslim needs to have the full submission. “Udkhul fis silm’e ka’affa” is the Qur’anic decree. Hence incomplete submission is not a sign of complete belief in Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’ala, rather a marker of rebellion. Such a rebellion makes it impossible to save a soul from hellfire. Therefore how a true Muslim dare oppose the implementation of sharia? It is indeed the greatest and the ugliest calamity of kuffar rule that sharia stays unpractised in a Muslim country. Like many obligatory rituals, it is an Islamic obligation that a Muslim must practice sharia law. Any non-compliance with sharia makes a person kafir (nonbeliever), zaleem (oppressor), and a fasiq (sinner) -as revealed in the Holy Qur’an in Surah Maida in verses 44, 45, and 47. Therefore, can a Muslim ever accept any non-sharia law? It is like accepting idolatry. This is why before the advent of colonial rule, all Muslim countries had sharia law. Apart from sharia, Muslims were not accustomed to any other law. For more than six hundred years of Muslim rule, therefore the Indian judiciary ran on sharia law. The famous Fatawa-e-Alamgiri is the collection of such laws. But the colonialists dismantled the whole system; not only they took away political liberty, but also put an embargo on the practice of Islam in the court. Thus the colonial occupation of India caused the ugliest catastrophe for the Muslims. The colonialists put a bar against becoming a full Muslim. Hence the Muslims didn’t have any choice but to end the kuffar occupation and create an Islamic state.

For an Indian Hindu, the independence of India was a subject of his political freedom. But for the Indian Muslims, the creation of an independent Islamic country was a religious obligation. The mere end of colonial rule wasn’t the solution to Muslims’ problem. Today’s India gives clear testimony to that. India got freedom in 1947, but the Muslims didn’t get any freedom for the full practice of Islam. They can’t even dream of practicing sharia there. The imposed bar against the full practice of Islam –as was introduced by the British still remains. Rather the situation has markedly deteriorated. Even a false rumour of slaughtering a cow brings death, torture, and public lynching to the Indian Muslims. Even their economic, social, and educational progress is severely restricted. The number of doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientists, industrialists, and other professionals living in only one Pakistani city of Karachi or a Bangladeshi city of Dhaka couldn’t be produced by 200 million Indian Muslims in the last 72 years!

The life and death issue

In fact, with the imminent end of the British colonial rule, it was quite obvious that the Muslims of South Asia would face more sinister danger of becoming the perpetual hostage in the hands of more aggressive foes like the Hindu chauvinists. Indian democracy is nothing more than a mobocracy of the majority Hindutva fascists. Many of these Hindu bigots are not ready to give survival rights to the Muslims on Indian soil. They openly plead for full Muslim cleansing in public gathering. Such a project of the extremist Hindu came into execution just after the end of British rule. The Hindu extremist parties like Rashtriya Sevak Sangh (RSS), Shiv Shena, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, and many others didn’t hide such intention. It is no secret that RSS and Shib Shena openly runs arms training camps in Indian cities to train its hundreds of thousands of young male and female members with such anti-Muslim bigotry and venom of vengeance. Through wholesale massacres of Muslim men and women and destroying their houses and shops in thousands of anti-Muslim riots, these extremist Hindus indeed display their murderous hatred against Muslims. To them, the Islamic faith is not the only problem. Since Muslims kill and eat their goddess cow are taken as unforgivable offenders. Hence they consider Muslims as irreconcilable enemies. The Hindu mob doesn’t bother killing Muslims on such a pretext –such an event recently happened in Haryana State of northern India.

An Indian cow has more survival right than an Indian Muslim man, woman, or child. The toxic Hindu psyche that Allama Iqbal -a great Muslim poet cum intellectual and Qaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah -a visionary politician could correctly witness in those last days of British occupation. Now the Indian Muslims directly experience that with their own lives. Mr. Jinnah and other Muslim League leaders found the Hindu psyche incurable. So they could easily foresee the catastrophic fate of the Indian Muslims under the Hindu rule. Such anti-Muslim motive of the Hindutva Hindus was displayed in the Hindu culture, literature, social behaviour, and politics. Hence, it didn’t need to be an intellectual to understand the imminent calamity of Hindu rule in India. As a result, establishing a separate state for the Indian Muslims didn’t remain merely a political matter; it became a life and death issue. As the days of freedom from British rule got closer, the issue of an independent Pakistan went up to an explosive level. The British colonialists were never a friend of Muslims, rather they proved their enmity against Muslims from day one of their occupations. But they were more concerned for a safe departure from India. Denying the Muslims their survival rights would have seriously endangered their safe return. Hence they were compelled to swallow the bitter truth. As a result, Pakistan –the largest Muslim country on the world map came into being.

The product of an ideological war

Pakistan is indeed the product of an ideological war. In those critical days, the Indian Muslims were blessed with an army of intellectual fighters who could fight the ideological battle successfully against the opponents of Pakistan. They could also dismantle the linguistic, ethnic, and sectarian barriers and could unite the Muslim youths from Chittagong to Peshawar under the flag of the Muslim League. Because of them, the Indian Congress failed miserably to sell its concept of an undivided India to the Muslims. Hence, no one needed to fire a single bullet for Pakistan’s creation.

In those days, the role of the secularised ulama of the Jamiat-e-Ulama-i-Hind was deplorable. They divorced the idea of sharia rule from their belief. Hence they didn’t feel any need for an Islamic state. They thought that if mosques and madrasas like the one in Deoband can survive on Indian soil, it would be enough for Muslims’ religious rights. Such a political concept of this secular ulama was rejected by the vast majority of Indian Muslims. The Muslims of five major linguistic categories of South Asia like the Bengalis, the Punjabis, the Sindhis, the Pashtuns, and the Baluch voluntarily merged together to form this new Islamic country. They took such a decision under no duress or conspiracy or foreign intervention. It is worth noting that each of these constituent linguistic Muslim groups had a geographical area and a population size larger than more than half of the world’s independent states like Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Belgium, Switzerland, and many others to form their own independent state. But they moved beyond those narrow parochial considerations and opted for a united Pakistan. Because the disintegrated Muslim states were indefensible against the Indian invasion –as happened to Hyderabad, Kashmir, Goa, Manvador, and Sikkim.

Even the Muslims of the Hindu majority provinces like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujrat, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, and others who had no chances to include their provinces in the proposed territory of Pakistan were also in the forefront of the Pakistan movement. In fact, some of the best campaigners of the Pakistan Movement, even Muhammad Ali Jinnah –the main leader, came from one of such Muslim minority provinces. They considered it a crucial mission for the betterment of the whole Muslim ummah. At least they wished the best for the majority of Muslims of the subcontinent. The case of the Bengali Muslims –the largest Muslim population in South Asia was special. They were far ahead of other Indian Muslims to foresee a great catastrophe under the majority Hindu rule. The Muslims of Bengal had two oppressive chains around their neck: one of the British occupiers and the other one of the Hindu zamindars (landowning feudals). In comparison to others, they had a long history of suffering under British rule. Delhi lost independence in 1857, but Bengal lost in 1757 –exactly 100 years ago. Hence, they didn’t need any lecture to understand the need for freedom from both the British and the Hindu rule. Therefore Bengal became the birthplace of the All India Muslims League. The Muslim League was born in Dhaka in 1906. Bengal also became the formidable stronghold of Muslim politics in the subcontinent. Bengal was the first province where the Muslims League could form its own government and played the role of game-changer in Indian politics. Especially the massive sacrifice of the Bengali Muslims by the hands of Hindu thugs put the final nail on the coffin of the Hindu dream of an undivided India. It was on the occasion of Muslim League’s Direct Action Day on 16 August 1946. On that fateful day, more than five thousand poor Bengali Muslims were slaughtered in the streets of Kolkata. After such a great sacrifice of the Bengali Muslims, the Indian Congress leader Mr. Gandhi quickly understood that the concept of undivided India is incompatible with Muslims’ political ideology. Therefore he quickly accepted the division of India and the creation of Pakistan.

The crimes of the Trojan Horses

But the victory of pan-Islamic ideology didn’t last long. Pakistan had its worst enemy within. They are the enemy’s Trojan Horses –the home-grown enemies of Islam and Muslims. They are the secularist cum nationalist elements who were defeated in 1947 but not fully eliminated. Hence they got the full opportunity to resurge with their full anti-Islamic venom and could fully occupy the country. So it again proved that those who make the half revolution only dig their own graves. As a consequence, the country is lost to the type of enemies who opposed its creation in 1947. It is now overwhelmed by the politics of betrayal. The betrayal is not only against the ideological concept of Pakistan’s own creation but also against the sovereignty of Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’ala and His sharia.

The ruling deep-seated elites of Pakistan are so much secularised that they are more compatible with the alien kuffar imperialists than with the native Islamists. The secularist elites have been recruited as trusted partners by the US and other imperialists in their war on Islam. Pakistan has never been short of such committed people ever-ready to work for the imperialists. Those who fought shoulder to shoulder with the colonial imperialists in the World Wars and served in the colonial bureaucracy were never sacked from Pakistan’s strategic position. In fact, the Army cantonments, the civil bureaucracy, and the judiciary stayed under the direct occupation of these British-trained radical secularists. The Army never won any war for Pakistan but showed their skills only to conquer the unarmed civil population several times.

The secularists’ occupation didn’t remain confined only within their own institutional cum cultural islands, they took full control of the whole country. They have been fully successful in dismantling the Islamisation project of Pakistan. Initially, the secularists scornfully ridiculed that the Islamists of different sects will not be able to agree on a single point of Islam. But such a notion was quickly foiled. The Sunnis, the Ahle Hadith, and the Shia ulama could agree on 22 points for full Islamisation of Pakistan. It was on January 21 to 24, in 1951, under the leadership of Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, the eminent religious scholars of both East and West Pakistan could produce the historical document called the Basic Objective Points for the constitution. In those crucial days, the secularist Trojan Horses installed in key positions by their colonial masters had their own agenda. They could foresee their own political death in those 22 points of Islamisation. So they engineered a coup, dismantled the constituent assembly, and finally put those 22 points in the cold storage.

The evils of secularism

Secularism doesn’t have the glue to bind people together. Instead, it makes people greedy, power-hungry, and divisive. Why should a Baluch or a Sindhi secularist trust his Punjabi or Pashtun competitors? Rather they will consider each other as the incompatible enemy. Pakistan’s stockpile of nuclear bombs, a huge army, and air or road links are not going to solve this problem. It needs a strong linkage between people’s hearts. Only because of such strong linkage, the Muslims of the whole of South Asia could create a united Pakistan with a huge India in their midst. Hence for creating Pakistan, they need not have any Army. The same is true for its sustenance. The army is needed only to protect its border, not to occupy its own country. But the Pakistan Army repeatedly showed its priority to occupy the country and neglected the defence of the border. The Army even bombed their own people, destroyed hundreds of villages and displaced millions of people with the help of the American partners. As a result of the Army’s US-inspired war on people, the most peaceful northern part of Pakistan is now a perpetual war zone. There is no sign that the Army is winning its war there.

The Muslims can forge the cementing glue only by strengthening the Qur’anic knowledge and pan-Islamic Muslim brotherhood. On the contrary, through de-Islamisation, the secularists could successfully dismantle the pre-existing Islamic linkage and politically dismember Pakistan -long before the full Indian invasion in 1971.  Now their next target is surviving Pakistan. Thousands of nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles couldn’t save the Soviet Union from disintegration. That will not work in Pakistan either. Bombs are not made to unite people. On the contrary, these can aggravate the problem irreparably. An ideological country must fix its problem ideologically and not militarily. But the leaders have lost focus. They are more focused on aggravating the problem. Politics is the art of uniting people; but it was not allowed to work by the Army. If the consensus 22 point prescription of the ulama was incorporated in the constitution, Pakistan could have solved its problem long before.

A land of two nations and the unending war

The enemies’ war never ends. It only changes its strategy, the battlefields, and the arsenals. Pakistan is embedded with internal enemies from day one of its creation. They are the home-grown secularists. They are the perpetual internal enemies of Islam and Muslims. Secularism breeds nationalism, tribalism, racism, and fascism. The ideology of secularism is diagonally opposite to that of Islam. They not only restrict the entry of Islam into the state institutions but also use the state institutions to take people away from Islam. Therefore, the occupation of a state by the secularists is no less damaging to Islam than infidels’ occupation. Hence a holy war called jihad is inevitable in Muslims’ life wherever secularists occupy a Muslim country.

A believer in Islam can never reconcile with the secularists’ occupation of a Muslim land. Such occupation makes it impossible to practice full Islam. This is why it is not possible to practice obligatory sharia and the Qur’anic literacy in Pakistan. Whereas, practicing sharia is a core issue in Islam. It is no less important than practicing five-time prayer, month long fasting, hajj, and zakat. Non-adherence to sharia is enough to make one kafir (infidel), zalem and fasik -as clearly declared in surah Maidah in verses 44, 45 and 47. Therefore, wherever there exists no sharia-compliant judiciary, true Islamists are faith-bound to start a war –as did the Prophet (peace be upon him) and his companions. Pakistan is not an exception. As a result, Pakistan is in a war situation. The Islamists call it a jihad against secularists’ occupation and the secularists declare their war on the Islamists. The secularists call Islamists’ war a terrorist act. As if, Islam has no war; it has only terrorism! Hence Pakistan is indeed divided into two warring nations: the nation of Islamists and the nation of secularists.

Establishing an Islamic state is a Divine obligation on every Muslim so that all state institutions can work with the Islamic mission of enforcing the right and eradicating the evils (a’maru bil ma’ruf wa nehi anil mun’kar) –as ordained by Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’ala in the Holy Qur’an. It goes against the prophetic tradition to keep the state and its institutions -the most powerful institutions on the earth outside Islam’s domain. To fulfil the Divine obligation, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) had to establish an Islamic state. For ten years, the Prophet (peace be upon him) worked as the head of the state. He needed to fight many wars to defend its border. After his death, his best companions continued with the same mission. In fact, most of his companions had to sacrifice their lives to fulfil the mission. Only because of such a state-building role of the Prophet (peace be upon him), the Muslims could emerge as the most powerful civilizational world power in human history. Muslims of all ages have an obligation to follow this prophetic legacy. Pakistan was indeed created to carry on such a prophetic legacy.

Pakistan has the needed potential to emerge as an Islamic civilizational state in the modern world. But the secularists are not compatible with such an Islamic vision and mission. Hence, they turned arch-enemies of its conceptual foundation and its existence from the day one of its birth. So, the real enemies of Pakistan do not lie outside. They indeed exist and work inside the country. The secularists lost their war in 1947, but they have quickly taken over the whole country. Their main power bases lie in the Army, the judiciary, media, and the bureaucracy –the most secularist institutions in Pakistan and the perfect legacy of the colonial era. Former Governor-General Gulam Muhammad, former President General Ayyub Khan, former President General Yahiya Khan, Former Chief Justice Munir, and many bigwigs of Pakistan’s politics came from secular institutions. They started their career as the perfect servants of the kuffar colonialists. They didn’t serve a single day in the Pakistan movement. Hence they didn’t have any love for Islam, democracy, Muslims, and Islamic Pakistan. The Islamists failed to identify and fight back these internal enemies. As a consequence, Pakistan became the helpless hostage of these Trojan Horses. Because of them, Pakistan didn’t need any external enemies to dismantle its integrity and ideological bedrock.

In the history of Pakistan, the crimes of this deep state are huge. The military and the civil establishment didn’t allow the elected civilian government to function. They usurped the ownership of the country only to benefit their own agenda. The external and the internal enemies of Pakistan were ever-ready to support them. They engineered so many civil and military coups to unseat the elected governments. While the civilian government of Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra of the Muslim League could successfully frame a constitution in the mid-fifties and required only a signature of Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad. But the Governor-General didn’t put his signature on the constitution, rather dissolved the government. At that time, Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra was on an official tour of the US. Ghulam Muhammad committed another crime. He also dissolved the Constituent Assembly –the only elected body to frame the constitution and run the country. It is a pity that the killer of democracy was never punished, rather his crime was ratified by the Supreme Court chief judge Justice Munir –another old obedient servant of the British judiciary. Since then it became an ugly norm in Pakistan that the highest seat of the judiciary always approved the takeover of the country by the civil and military autocrats. Thus all partners of the deep state worked shoulder to shoulder to rob the people’s rights in Pakistan.

In 1956, Prime Minister Chaudhury Muhammad Ali –a Nezam-e-Islami Party leader, succeeded to frame another constitution. It was accepted by the leaders of both East and West Pakistan. By a military coup in 1958, General Ayuub Khan – a former obedient military servant of the British colonialists inflicted a lethal blow not only to the 1956’s constitution but also to the existence of a united Pakistan. A proven servant of the British imperialist used his lethal venom against Islam and the Muslims. By abolishing the constitution -the consensus charter of democratic rule, General Ayuub Khan effectively blocked the democratic participation of the country’s majority population living in East Pakistan. He appeared as the enemy of the people of East Pakistan. By killing democracy, he indeed sowed the seed of quick disintegration of Pakistan. As a result, in 1971, united Pakistan died of a constitutional crisis. General Yahiya Khan while taking over power in 1969 could have avoided the crisis by only one line of an announcement that the dissolution of the 1956 constitution was illegal, hence rightly gets restored. Instead of doing that, he unsettled the settled constitutional issue. In 1971, both Shaikh Mujibur Rahman and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto proved unfit to solve the issue.

The moral meltdown and the calamity

The creation of Pakistan has a special significance in Islamic history. It was for the second time in history that a state was created in the name of Islam and the Muslims of a huge territory voluntarily moved beyond their narrow ethnic, linguistic, and tribal boundaries. Such an ideological state was created for the first time by the early Muslims under the leadership of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). It wasn’t merely a state-building task, rather a civilization-building mission. Such a state can purify people’s ideology, culture, behaviour and politics. Because of such a civilizational state, the Arab, the Kurdish, the Turkish, the Iranian, the Moore, and Muslims of other ethnic and linguistic identities could form a single cemented ummah. As a result, Muslims could emerge as the number one world power.

But the problem starts with ideological meltdown. And an ideological meltdown doesn’t come alone. It also brings moral, cultural, and political meltdown. Because of it, the Muslims went back to the old days of pre-Islamic jahiliyyah (ignorance). They degenerated into small pieces around their tribal, racial, linguistic, and other local identities. The Arabs of one land, one religion, and one language became divided into 22 states. Although unity is obligatory in Islam, the Muslims proved to be unfit to live with a unified political and ideological identity. They became more tribal than cosmopolitan. In such a degenerating context, the creation of Pakistan was indeed a great achievement. It showed a ray of great hope not only to the Muslims of South Asia but also to the whole Muslim world.

It is also a historical reality that humans are highly susceptible to moral meltdown. Hence protecting ideological purity remains the greatest challenge in all ages. To prevent a moral meltdown, Islam has its own prescription. It makes understanding the Holy Qur’an a binding obligation on every man and woman. The Qur’anic literacy is no less important than the obligatory religious rituals like five-time prayers, month-long fasting, hajj, and zakat.

Moral meltdown has its catastrophic consequences on the political behaviour of people and the unity of the ummah. Because of people’s moral meltdown, even the worst criminals get applauded in public. They are taken as heroes. It makes common people complicit in horrendous crimes. Because of that, genocidal wars, World Wars, military invasions, occupation, ethnic cleansing, gas chambers, and dropping atom bombs get massive political support in the land of the perpetrators. So Pharaoh, Halaku Khan, Chengiz Khan, Hitler, George W Bush, and other genocidal killers were never solo performers. Millions of people voluntarily joined their mission. This is why the US-led war on Islam could generate a global coalition and recruit mercenaries even in the Muslim countries. Because of the moral meltdown, humans proved to be the wildest species on the earth. All the wild animals of all ages couldn’t match their carnage. Only in two World Wars, they could kill 75 million. 

The moral meltdown caused cracks in the pan-Islamic foundation of Pakistan and led people to dismantle its geopolitical unity. That led to the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971. The moral meltdown also showed its calamities even after 1971. The ethical degradation affected not only the top political elites but also the common people. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was caught red-handed in illegal money laundering and got ousted from his post by a court verdict. In a civilized country, it must be the norm that a criminal must not get any vote in any election. He must be kept locked up in a prison. Voting for a corrupt person is itself a complicity in corruption. A man with an iota of moral conscience can’t commit such a crime. But it is a great shame that millions of Pakistani people voted for Mr. Sharif’s party in the parliamentary election. It shows how badly and deeply the moral meltdown has damaged the ethical sense of the common people of Pakistan. How can a state that was created in the name of Islam attain its stipulated goal with such crippling moral disability of its people?

Enemies’ success and Muslims’ failure

Muslims have only two options: either to stand for Islam or for the enemy. There is no third or neutral option. There is always an ongoing war on Islam led by the US. But it is a shame that Pakistan has been a partner of the US’s war on Islam. Pakistan worked as a gateway for the US invasion into Afghanistan. Such a collaboration with the enemies tells a lot. The western imperialists do not make any mistake in identifying their own comrades. And Pakistan qualified to be a partner of the US crime. The US government gave money and weapons to Pakistan. The imperialist states like the US are not charity outfits. They spend every dollar with a strategic objective. Such help from the US-led imperialists comes to a Muslim country with a clear precondition that there shouldn’t be any effort of Islamisation. Rather de-Islamisation must be the priority. Any step of Islamisation instantly stops all western help. They rather encourage a coup to unseat any Islamist –as happened against President Dr. Muhammad Morsi of Egypt. The western leaders have special love for people like General Abdul Fattah al-Sissi of Egypt. Because, he could display his deep enmity against the Islamists by committing a genocide against them. They also had love for President Musharraf. Because, he allowed the US to use Pakistani soil to bomb Afghanistan. Thus the US package of money and weapons did the job. That the US and its allies could take Pakistan away from the Islamic agenda and make it impossible to implement sharia and Islamic education.

Fear of losing American approval is so pervasive in Pakistan’s politics that even the Islamists do not talk about the 22 objective points of the ulama. Even the demand for introducing sharia is not a political agenda of the so-called Islamic parties. The US considers sharia as a marker of Islamic militancy and terrorism, hence even the Islamic parties are afraid of making sharia their political agenda. This shows how the people of Pakistan have failed to discover the real source of strength. It is not the western ideology, weapons, or political support that helped Pakistan’s creation. Nor such western help will help sustain its existence. It was Islam and the blessing of Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’al that helped create this unique country. And if Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’ala helps, who else can do the harm?

To get help from Allah Sub’hana Ta’ala, it needs to fully align with His agenda. The agenda of Almighty Allah Sub’hana Ta’ala is nothing else but to bring overwhelming victory (li’yeuz’hirahu ald’dini kulli’hi) of Islam. What is the benefit of mere sustenance when one fails to please Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’ala? It is the ultimate failure of a state when it engages its citizens only in sustenance of worldly life with no success in the hereafter.

Muslims build a state, defend its borders and work day and night to bring victory to Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’ala’s agenda to attain success both here and in the hereafter. Such a mission is indeed the most important legacy of the Prophet (peace be upon him). The Muslims of South Asia sacrificed a lot for Pakistan. They created the state of Pakistan to excel in practicing the Prophet (peace be upon him)’s legacy. Only this way Muslims could showcase their faith and commitment to Islam. But again, the failure of Muslims of Pakistan is awful in this regard. In fact, such a failure worked as the mother of all failures in Pakistan. On the other hand, the success of the enemies is huge. They could successfully derail Pakistan from its purpose of creation. And Pakistan still continues with the betrayal.